Sisters

Arya Samuelson

We were lying on the train tracks and it was my idea. First we glanced anxiously from side to side, but I quickly found a position where the rail cushioned my neck and I stared up at the bird who had built her nest in the bridge’s belly.

I had never done something like this, but I wanted to do something you’d remember me by.

Maybe it was the logic of rosé, of late day sunlight soaking into skin that had forgotten what warmth could feel like, of a sea so close you can feel it breathing. The whole world was the breath of ocean and the smile of sun, sunset on a hill by the sea, and we were drinking rosé from the bottle.

Best friends living on opposite coasts. It was our first night together, reunited.

Before this, ambling our way back to your apartment, something was gripping around my heart, fluttering darkly, and there were the train tracks. Maybe too, I wasn’t ready to go home with you.

“Let’s lay down,” I said, already running over, knowing you would follow. So it was my idea, but it was mostly because of Anna and Sylvia and Virginia and all the women blood-binding us.

So much woman in me, in you. Too much for one body, it often felt. But together. Both of us with flaming batons in our bellies, honey in our throats, and so much water circulating through us that somehow we struck equilibrium. Despite all our fire, all our water, we both knew we’d arrive, eventually, at dry safe land.

Together, we could twirl those batons and set fire to the whole fucking world. What would it be like for our lives to be forever joined? -- not like these parallel running on and on, never touching because they never could. But like how water loves with such recognition of self. How our physical world of continents and countries and earth took shape simply because a body of water, a river or a stream or the salty ocean, met another body of water, and understood.

Born across the world from each other, me in America, you in Turkey, somehow we found each other.

The two of us so much like sisters we don’t even say “like.”

Sisters.

I had never wanted anything more from you than what you gave. I prided myself on the purity of the bond between us. My own capacity for it.

I tilted my head to look at you, ensconced in shadow, and behind there was the sun tearing itself apart and the people promenading. You were giggling and I was breathing deep.

My sister.

When space between doesn’t want to stay still, when it urges you closer.

The sleek line of ocean, the mountains hovering beyond like beneficent ghosts.

The sky so big and blue, the way I had forgotten the sky could look and feel. Unobstructed, easy, consuming. Tomorrow I would return home and you would stay here.

In bed together the other night, I admitted I wanted to kiss you. And you laughed and said so sweetly,

“You can kiss me if you want to.” I laid next to you, staring up, immobile. “But it won’t mean more than just a kiss,” you added.

Dry tongue scraped my throat. “It’s okay,” I whispered. And then I turned over and willed myself to fall asleep.

There was a pane of glass between us the rest of the weekend. We could see through it, but it was hard and icy and incontrovertible. My laughter sounded forced. I was terrified of touching you, even accidentally. The heat of it, what might surge inside me. And more than that, I feared what you would think -- that I couldn’t be trusted. I hated and was grateful for the glass. More than anything I didn’t want it to shatter.

The weekend dragged. We spent an entire afternoon at the bay, where I sobbed on the towel next to you and claimed I didn’t know why; I was probably just getting my period. You placed a hand on my back and I wanted to kill you.

Flashes of my mother. As a child I wanted to be everywhere she was. I clung to her legs, sat on her lap, wanted to live on her skin. When I had to go visit my father it felt like ripping apart flesh. What was a room without her in it? She’d leave, and it was like venturing beyond the radius of campfire, warmth sucking from the air.

I fear my mother thinks I am this way because of her. Because she was my best friend, my confidante, throughout my childhood. Because of how I’d occasionally crawl into her bed until I was thirteen and her boyfriend moved in. Before I understood what sex was, and even once I did, there was a sparkling in my belly that something might happen. Not because I wanted it to, but I didn’t know what else being so body-close to somebody I loved could mean.

What we do we think of women who fuck their mothers, their sisters? We have no language for this, though it plays out in dreams; the pulse of fantasies. It was wrong what I was feeling towards you.

That night, I struck my fist through the glass and told you everything. How I wanted you and didn’t know how to tell you, because how could we ever go back? My fear of losing everyone I loved. That you’d think me a pervert, a monster.

I made my confession to the white carpet. I couldn’t look at you.

And you embraced me, in all my confusion. Told me you understood. There was no need for shame. Your voice its own medicine.

But it wasn’t how you felt about me. And there was clarity in hearing this. Breeze from an open window. We hugged each other tightly and went to sleep, me on the couch and you in your own bed.

The next day, my last day, we went to the ocean.

We gathered rocks and carried them in our pockets.

I showed you my stones, the ones I loved, and you showed me yours, what you had chosen. I understood why you made your choice, and I loved you for it.

Sometimes I’d pick up a rock in my palm and know that it wasn’t mine, it was yours. Somehow, too, you did the same. There was no explanation. We just knew.

We ate our picnic on a cliff and you promised promised promised you’d never abandon me. I know you said it like this, because I wrote it down in my journal later. You said you loved me. You needed me.

We swore we’d never be without each other, that our friendship would push through anything and everything.

I believed you.

Back at home, on your balcony, we created a circle from the rocks. The warmth of the afternoon sun soaking into our skin. We held hands and whenever one of us started to speak, the other cried.

I realized: this is what it means for a friendship to be strong. Not pure or unadulterated. It means that it could hold. Bear its own weight.

I flew back to New York that evening, an almost full moon glowing by my side.

I wish the story ended here.

...

For months afterwards, you claim you are too busy to talk to me. I am used to this: placing our friendship at the center of my life, but never pressing too hard. I know most of all, you do not like to be cornered.

We speak on the phone a couple days before your visit and I do not hide the edge in my voice. I trust we will talk through it, just as we always have. Gradually, water erodes and wears down rock. Re-joins with its own.

You write me a feverish email. I couldn’t get on the plane, I just couldn’t do it. You won’t return my calls. You claim you are looking for a therapist. You confess you feel I have violated you.

I’ve always feared. That I am someone who will always want more, will always want too much. Desire as deceit. Not just my desire for women, but the desire I carry -- something shameful that shouldn’t be let into the light. I’ve never told anyone about my mother.

I rush to call you. If only we can hear each other’s voices and remember. It’s also true I crave your pardon. We will never speak on the phone.

Text you one last time. I don’t know what else to do. I can’t be your friend anymore. You never respond.

I’ll never know what happened. You were always so generous. Maybe I had asked for the one thing you would never give.

I had thought our sisterhood could hold it all. And this was why – and how – we were sisters.

Was asking unforgivable?

Six months later, I reach out to you on my birthday. One week later, you reply:

...Everywhere you go, you spin a web of lies and sex and deceit. You are exactly the kind of person I need to protect everyone I love from....

Your words slice through me and suddenly I have two bodies.

One Body:

Can’t. Move. Can’t. Lift. Feet.

Lungs twisted. Flaming. There is no breath.

Other Body like a stepping out of body, except Inside. A collarbone. Swelling across the ribs. Feet.

Knows you are wrong.

My love was no deception. I loved you. Your words are not the truth. Though they scald like only the words of someone who knows you, who loved you, can. Other Body throbs and tingles and somehow also numb. Grass.

Your words don’t have to be my truth.

It has now been a year, and I have not fought against the current. I have never written you back, or dared to re-read the email. Thinking of it makes my skin tremble. Tiny hairs bristle.

I have no other sisters. I may never meet someone like you again. And if I do, should they be my best friend or my lover? There are no rules for these things.

But I am no longer interested in boundaries, or their dissolution. I believe in desire like I believe in water. How it curves, flows, rushes, ripples. How water can and cannot be held. The Other Body.

I’ve kept the rocks. Atop my bureau, inside the drawers, on my desk. Clustered along my bookshelf, the windowsill by my bed. You know how rocks fade when they’re dry? Far from ocean painting them wet with every breath.